Defensive systems and countermeasures are critical to the survival of military and possibly to other ocean-going surface and subsurface platforms such as oil wells, drilling platforms and others. Current and future threats, such as from torpedoes, underwater rockets, mines and so forth have, and will have the ability to counter many defensive countermeasure systems that are deployed by surface and subsurface vehicles. Though there have been a multitude of systems designed to counter torpedoes over the years, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,195,042, 3,875,844, and others, most, if not all, of these countermeasure systems are outdated with respect to current threats. The speed and sophistication of current torpedoes make most of the past anti-torpedo systems obsolete as most systems that use sensors to counter an underwater threat, such as Hagelberg and Lobitz's anti-ship torpedo defense missile (U.S. Pat. No. 4,215,630) can be countered in turn by countermeasure systems onboard a torpedo. This is relevant where a threat countermeasures such as in Hagelberg and Lobitz uses active sonar that can be detected by an oncoming threat. In addition, since a wake homing torpedo follows a zigzag path through the wake of a fleeing vessel, there is no assurance that such an oncoming threat will encounter or come sufficiently close to the explosive device of Hagelberg and Lobitz, which has a destructive range of only about 20 feet. Other counter threat systems, such as Lavan's (U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,109) and Longerich (U.S. Pat. No. 4,262,595) do deploy a solid anti-torpedo object (net) to interfere with a threat torpedo but would be slow to deploy since they have no means of assistance to spread the net to its full deployment width. This is critical when going up against current supercavitating torpedoes that can travel in excess of 200 knots (about 220 miles per hour), which will cover a range of 10 miles in about 2.75 minutes or less, and may simply penetrate a net due to their mass and speed. Systems that deploy nets will also cause significant damage to sea-life as well as other friendly surface and subsurface vehicles. Another deficit of large nets are that they are heavy and require larger and more powerful delivery vehicles. The current invention overcomes these shortcomings by having embodiments that rapidly deploy an array or field of lines that may carry explosives, sensors or other elements to form a partially physical barrier that can counter fast moving underwater threats such as torpedoes.